CHILDREN’S ALTRUISM IN PUBLIC GOOD AND DICTATOR EXPERIMENTS WILLIAM T. HARBAUGH and KATE KRAUSE* We examine the de  elopment of altruistic and free-riding beha  ior in 6  12-year-old children. We find that the le  el of altruistic beha  ior in children is similar to that of adults but that repetition has a different effect. Younger children’s contributions tend to increase in later rounds of the experiments, whereas the contributions of older children, like those of adults, tend to decline. Group attachment is associated with higher contributions. Contributions in a subsequent dictator experiment are corre- lated with first-round contributions in the public good experiment, but are not Ž . strongly correlated with last-round contributions. JEL H41 I. INTRODUCTION Research on altruism among adults using linear public good experiments has estab- lished a number of interesting results. Adults are initially far more generous than would be true if they were motivated by plain selfish- ness. With repetition, most gradually start to free-ride, but many continue to contribute substantial amounts, suggesting that a taste for altruism is, if not universal, at least widespread. The existence of such a prefer- ence is confirmed by a wide variety of behav- iors in nonexperimental settings. Since altru- istic behavior is an important feature of the economy, a natural, and important, question is to ask were it comes from. As a first step toward addressing this question, in this arti- cle we examine the behavior of 6- to 12-year- old children in public good experiments. We begin by comparing the extent of al- truistic behavior in children with that of adults. If even young children behave in a *This research was funded by grants from the Uni- versity of New Mexico Research Allocation Committee and the National Science Foundation. We thank Jim Andreoni, Arik Levinson, Lise Vesterlund, Jim Ziliak, and an anonymous referee for helpful comments. We would also like to express our appreciation to the City of Albuquerque recreation program leaders for their help organizing and conducting these experiments, and to give our thanks to the children who participated. Harbaugh: Assistant Professor, Department of Eco- nomics, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon 97403-1285, Phone 541-346-1244, Fax 541-346-1243, E-Mail harbaugh@oregon.uoregon.edu Krause: Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, 1915 Roma NE, University of New Mexico, Albu- querque, New Mexico 87131-1101, Phone 505-277- 3429, Fax 505-277-9445, E-Mail kkrause@unm.edu way similar to adults, the taste for altruism must be, if not innate, at least determined by very early experiences. Next, since hetero- geneity in altruistic behavior may be due to differences in these experiences, we test whether the variance in children’s altruistic behavior is correlated with demographic and other variables. The observed decline in con- tribution among adults suggests that at least some adults learn the free-riding strategy over the course of the experiment or that confusion regarding the protocol is reduced with repeated play. There is evidence that adults are confused by the experimental pro- tocol, and it is plausible that children might be even more so. To determine whether learning about either the free-riding strategy or about the protocol is age-related, we in- vestigate how behavior in this experiment differs across children of different ages. Fi- nally, to test whether the linear public goods game is a reasonable way of studying altru- ism in children, we conduct a second test of altruism, based on the dictator game, on a subset of the original subjects. In a typical linear public goods experi- ment subjects are recruited and put into groups of N members, where N is generally between 4 and 10. Subjects play either a preannounced or randomly determined num- ber of rounds. At the beginning of each round, subjects are endowed with experi- ment currency that is exchanged for cash at the end of the experiment. They then must decide whether to keep it or to contribute any portion of it to the group. The money 95 Economic Inquiry Ž . ISSN 0095-2583 Vol. 38, No. 1, January 2000, 95109 Western Economic Association International